IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Green News Report special coverage: Buckle up - landmark US report from 13 federal agencies warns climate change is here and now, and a clear and present danger... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

EXPLORE THE IMPACTS OF CLIMATE CHANGE
The National Climate Assessment summarizes the impacts of climate change on the United States, now and in the future. A team of more than 300 experts guided by a 60-member Federal Advisory Committee produced the report, which was extensively reviewed by the public and experts, including federal agencies and a panel of the National Academy of Sciences.

“The contents confirm climate change is not a distant threat. It is affecting the American people already...On the whole, summers are longer and hotter, with longer periods of extended heat. Wildfires start earlier in the spring and continue later into the fall. Rain comes down in heavier downpours,” Holdren said. “People are experiencing changes in the length and severity of seasonal allergies. And climate disruptions to water and agriculture have been increasing.”

“Corn producers in Iowa, oyster growers in Washington State, and maple syrup producers in Vermont are all observing climate-related changes that are outside of recent experience," they wrote in the report.

The greater threat, as outlined in the report, is that more frequent and fiercer natural disasters will begin to break down the technologies and implements of modern society, posing dangers not just to a few unfortunate disaster victims, but everyone who has become accustomed to clean water and a steady flow of power. One section quietly details how disruptions like worsening heat waves and drought are already spurring "cascading events" that impact not just a single region or industry, but that are capable of causing water shortages, serious strains on the electrical grid, and severe damages to lives and livelihoods across the economic and social spectrum. Another highlights the now-omnipresent threat of city-wide "multiple systems failures."

The report, required by federal law, is "the most comprehensive assessment ever done on how climate is affecting the United States," said University of Illinois climate scientist Donald Wuebbles, a study author.

Between 1958 and 2012, the amount of precipitation falling in very heavy events increased by 71% in New England and the north east, while in the drier West it went up by just 5%. "There is no equivocation," said lead author Prof Gary Yohe from Wesleyan University. "It is fundamentally the pace of observations of extreme weather that makes it clear it is not natural variability."

[The report] details the tough toll of climate change on the U.S. and what may happen if it's not addressed. The findings are especially bad for California and Alaska, which will experience severe drought and melting.

Acting on a recommendation of Stanford's Advisory Panel on Investment Responsibility and Licensing, the Board of Trustees announced that Stanford will not make direct investments in coal mining companies. The move reflects the availability of alternate energy sources with lower greenhouse gas emissions than coal.

On Monday, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) issued an earthquake warning for a state east of the Rockies — for the first time ever. The warning was for Oklahoma, where the rate of earthquakes has increased by about 50 percent since last October.
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While fracking itself has been linked to a handful of earthquakes, it is the injection of fracking wastewater deep into the earth that is believed to trigger most fracking-related tremors.

"East Antarctica's Wilkes Basin is like a bottle on a slant. Once uncorked, it empties out," Matthias Mengel of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, lead author of the study in the journal Nature Climate Change, said in a statement.

Carbon storage has to expand rapidly, or coal burning has to cease, if the world is to avoid dangerous climate change.
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Restraining global warming to no more than 2 degrees Celsius will require changing how the world produces and uses energy to power its cities and factories, heats and cools buildings, as well as moves people and goods in airplanes, trains, cars, ships and trucks, according to the IPCC. Changes are required not just in technology, but also in people's behavior.

We need to start attacking the climate change deniers for what they are. They are 19th century oligarchs/robber barons (or gullible followers of them) trying to hold onto their control of politics and the economy as it passing them by (if not already gone by) in the 21st century.
The robber barons of the 21st century are not conservatives in the sense that they are pro-business because more jobs and more economic development can occur with a green economy than with fossil fuels. It is only conservative in the "selfish, keep things the way they are because it is profitable for me" mindset.
Being green is not anti-business, it is anti-pollution. Fossil fuels cause more problems/costs for the future than it profits now.
The fossil fuel companies used to be able to make profits at the end of the 20th century with environmental regulations, but are now finding it harder to maintain their grip on the economy without gutting regulations. That is the sign of desperate and waning power. They have to destroy everything around them in order to keep the level of power they have now. If they want to destroy themselves that is their own problem but they can't destroy the planet (or at least human survivability) while they are trying to cling to their power.